Monday, November 21, 2011

Muhammed “al-Sharif” al-Idrisi (c. 1100-1165) was a major Muslim scholar, geographer and mapmaker of the medieval Islamic period. He was born in the town of Ceuta, in Morocco, and was descended from a line of nobleman who traced their lineage to the Prophet Mohammed.

Al-Idrisi took an interest in foreign lands and travel early in life. Starting in his teenage years, and continuing into adulthood, he made extensive voyages through Spain, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, deliberately gathering geographical data along the way.

After completing university in Cordoba, Spain, he relocated to Sicily where the Normans had recently overthrown its Arab rulers. Opportunities were rife in Sicily for people like al-Idrisi since, as Ibn Jubayr, another Arab traveler-savant wrote, “the Normans tolerated and patronized a few Arab families in exchange for knowledge.”

Sicily’s new ruler, Roger II, invited al-Idrisi to join his court at Palermo. His education, travels, and his extensive political connections made him a valuable addition to the King’s court. Being a patron of the arts and sciences, and having huge interest geography, Roger commissioned al-Idrisi to produce a new map of the world that would rival no other. It was task that would consume a large portion of the mapmaker’s life.

Al-Idrisi combined his personal knowledge and experience with information from older maps, particularly Roman and Ptolemaic charts. He and his team also collected reports from seafaring Muslim merchants, Norman voyagers, and Christian scholars, and used that information to assemble what would be the most accurate map of its time.

In 1154, after 18 years of toil, al-Idrisi produced his magnum opus, a map which came to be called the “Tabula Rogeriana”, or the “Book of Roger”. It was a chart of the known world comprising Europe, Asia, and North Africa and the Horn of Africa – and extending all the way to Southeast Asia. Al-Idrisi is said to have presented the map to Roger on a disc of solid silver two metres in diameter. The map was also made into manuscript form, a few of which survive today.

In keeping with Islamic tradition, al-Idrisi’s map is oriented with the south appearing at top, and north at the bottom (the maps here are turned right-side up for viewing). Though lacking images of people, animals, or plants, it contains stylized portrayals of mountains and rivers. It is also one of the first maps of its kind to depict the Indian Ocean as an open body of water connecting to the Pacific – details which were perhaps provided by Arab and Chinese mariners.

For three centuries, geographers used al-Idrisi’s unaltered maps. His works inspired some of the world’s greatest explorers, scholars and cartographers including Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun, Piri Re’is, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. The above circular map is a simplified reproduction, made in Cairo in 1456, of al-Idrisi’s masterwork, the “Tabula Rogeriana”, seen below.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

The Golden Century for silk, and its use globally, was between 1830 and 1930. It was during that period, in 1893, that one of the earliest silk factories in Lebanon, Maaser Beiteddine, was built.

The women of the villages were provided with mulberry trees where the silkworm grew, and were made responsible for the production of the fibre. They took care of the worms, including sensitive temperature and humidity control of the storage rooms, until they began to spin their cocoons.

The worms were then transported to the silk factory where they were killed in a process involving hot air, and the silk from the cocoons captured. The textile was shipped from Lebanon primarily to France and Italy.

The silk industry was a useful way for rural women in Lebanon to contribute significantly to the financial welfare of their households, while the men worked in the fields. The use of silk took a great downturn after the introduction of nylon by Dupont Chemical after the Second World War. The factory in Beiteddine, the town in Lebanon's Chouf region famous for its elegant and aristocratic palace, slowly went into disuse.

This was until Nino Azzi, the founder of ´Art Lounge´ - a gallery and cultural space in the Karantina area of Beirut - and Hala Khattar decided to transform Maaser Beiteddine into a gallery. Hala Khattar's family were the owners of the silk factory, and it made sense to extend Art Lounge to the serenity of the Chouf mountains.

A recent exhibit in the silk factory suitably celebrated "Woman in the Contemporary Arts", highlighting the work of thirty local and international artists.

About Me

John Bell and John Zada are two Canadians of Middle East origin who have had a lifelong fascination with the Middle East. A diplomat and a writer respectively, they have both spent more than two decades living and working throughout the region in various capacities. Here they pool their knowledge, insights, and experiences to generate and enliven new perspectives on the region, and project new ideas regarding human development as related to the Middle East and beyond.

About this Blog

'Al-Bab' is a Middle East blog that looks at the region beyond the stale, news grabbing conflicts that afflict it. This site presents the land, people and spirit of the Middle East, as well as its past, present, and sometimes its future, as its authors see it.

The blog offers a patchwork of vignettes that celebrate the region's rich heritage and the many linkages shared by the people who live there. It also aims to present new and constructive paradigms for conscious human evolution, with the Middle East as a backdrop.

We hope the blog will inform those with an interest in learning about the Middle East, and also act as a vector for learning regarding the possibility of positive human change.